Notifications (Admin discussions)

Thu 28 Oct 2010, 08:59

Richard -

You are site admin - and I guess owner of the site too?

If you pushed an email to all registered users advising them that the T&Cs are changing in say, two weeks, to include a clause allowing you to push email, all users then have ample time to unsubscribe if they wish or opt-out if you wish to provide that function.

This is perfectly acceptable to the Data commissioner.

Fri 15 Oct 2010, 17:04

Seriously, you just can't do that retrospectively. The direct mail regulations are very clear: you can't send messages without the express permission of the receiver (usually opt-in, but opt-out if you were selling them something at the time of gathering their e-mail address). I can change the Ts & Cs to do anything I like pretty much within the confines of the website, of course, but that doesn't include e-mailing people.

I do see that there might be some potential value in offering an e-mail update. Obviously there's also a resource cost to running it, though, and there's some other enhancements to the site which will probably be of more ongoing value to concentrate on right now. But more of that anon!

Thu 14 Oct 2010, 22:40

The RSS feed is flagged on the relevant page in the industry standard way: using an HTML link element.

Most browsers should display this as an RSS icon in the address bar: certainly it works in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. There are RSS feeds for the forum, news and events pages, so you should see the RSS icon appear for each of those.

You can't simply retrofit a "we've decided to send you e-mail" term onto the Ts & Cs (which are for the forum only, anyway, not the whole website), otherwise every company in Britain would do it. I'll give some thought to adding an opt-in button on user registration, but I'm very wary of offering it as a possibility, lest every event organiser start asking for a mailout... "but we've only sold five tickets and our society will go bust if you don't help us!".